Over the past few years we all have come to love the Pantech line of phones, after all they did have the world smallest flip phone (C3b) and the Pantech Duo which I have to say is one of my all time favorite smart phones. Oh and let’s not forget the classy C150.

Pantech makes a great cheap phone, and while they are cheap, cheap does not describe the quality of the phones they make and they make no exception with the C610 an affordable phone that will deliver the style you want and the features you need without burning a hole in your pocket.

Starting today October 6th 2008 at&t and Pantech have announced the availability of the C610 and for the past two days I have had a chance to play with it nonstop, check out the pictures below.

As you can see from the pictures the C610 is a nice looking phone, and although I am not a huge fan of Red, Indi (LaIndia) has said that red is a manly color, and I have to agree the red featured on the C610 is a unisex red good for men and women alike.

The phone has a color 96x96 pixel external screen that displays the current time, incoming caller info, amount of missed calls and how many voice and text messages you have. Which I like because I do not have to open the phone to see what time it is.

When you open the phone you are greeted by a beautiful 3.67 x 1.81 x .72 inches color display. The display is vibrant and crystal clear, great for watching videos via att CV, and with the 3G speed the phone offers watching video on the Pantech C610 is a fun experience.

But not only is the video streaming quality good on the phone, so is the call quality. Maybe at&t has improved their network here in NYC since I last used it but it isn’t often that I can say it sounded as if the person I was talking to was standing right next to me even if they were no more than 10 feet away. The sound quality on the C610 is amazing the same thing for the speaker phone.

One thing I didn’t expect to find on the C610 was a built in AGPS that works with TeleNav, and for 30 days you can get TeleNav for free with the phone.

TeleNav on the C610 worked great, found my location fast and the only real waiting I had to do was when it created my account the first time I started up the software. 

I downloaded Google Maps onto the phone to see if you can use their software with the GPS, but Google doesn’t offer that option on their Mobile Maps for this particular phone.

Browsing the web on the phone is great, the built in browser is limited in what it can handle but if you download the Mobile version of Opera you can visit your favorite websites like HardwareGeeks.com and CellRants.com with no problem. The speed of the 3G network the C610 is on is amazing.

Yes you can install third party applications and games onto the phone if they are Java based. The phone is pretty powerful so after they are downloaded they seem to install quickly and when you open them they load rather fast. I was really impressed by that.

The C610 has a built in Camera which takes some pretty good pictures, the pictures are ok for a camera phone.

As I mentioned earlier the C610 has a microSD slot, which is great for added storage for all those games and apps you may want to install, it’s also great for bringing your MP3 collection over to the phone although DRM’ed music didn’t seem to play (iTunes and Zune) which isn’t a surprise.  But it should work with SlotMusic.

The only thing lacking on the C610 are headphones but maybe there will be some available for sale separately I hope.

Full Feature and Spec list for the phone:

 3G
 AGPS technology
 Video functionality
 Music playback and storage
 Music ID Recognition
 MEdia™ Net
 Instant Messaging: AIM, Windows Live, Yahoo! Messenger
 Video Sharing
 Dimension: (3.67 x 1.81 x .72 inches)
 Weight: 3.25 oz.
 Display Main: 2.0” 260K TFT (176*220 Pixels)
 Display Sub: 1.0” 65K CSTN (96*96 Pixels)
 Camera: 1.3 Megapixels
 Talk Time: Up to 3 hours
 Standby time: Up to 10 days

Overall the phone is great and we award it our 5 Star Kick Ass award. It is a great little budget phone that delivers all the features you’d expct from a 200 dollar phone.

You should be able to get the Pantech C610 online at wireless.att.com, for $49 dollars and in some cases free with a 2 year contract depending on the market you are in.